Accurate and efficient modeling of aerodrome surface movement is an essential part of air transportation simulation. As air traffic increases, the aircraft ground transportation (herein referred to as aerodrome surface movement) and the density of aircraft travel paths in aerodrome surfaces also increase. Many aerodrome surface maps have been digitized and categorized in geographic information systems (GIS) models according to aeronautical database standards such as D0-272 (established by the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics). The digitized aerodrome surface maps are very complex, and too cumbersome for quick modeling of aerodrome surface movement or for quick data transmission to aircraft. Therefore, in order to support aircraft surface guidance and navigation, models must be simplified representations of the aerodrome surface movement, and the model generator must reliably extract the essential information from the digitized aerodrome surface map.
“Terminal area networks” are aerodrome surface movement models that provide simplified representations of aerodrome surface movement. As such, terminal area networks support aircraft surface guidance and navigation with the creation of unambiguous aircraft travel paths, the display of aircraft travel paths on an aerodrome surface map, and the transmission of aircraft travel paths in a format usable by onboard applications. The terminal area network is a graphic map that includes a series of terminal node-links combined into a terminal node-link graph.
As the building block of the terminal area network, the terminal area node-link is the most important component of aircraft situational awareness, surface guidance, and navigation. The terminal area node-link represents a travel path within the terminal area network; a travel path may be a taxiway or a runway. The terminal area node-link forms the core of visual and aural warnings generated in aerodrome moving map displays in cockpits. Accurate terminal area node-link information is the precondition for accurate and reliable spatial data within the terminal area network.
Terminal area networks are based upon maps generated by mapping agencies that extract information from aerial or satellite imageries, portions of scanned paper maps, or a combination thereof. Currently, terminal area node-links are manually or semi-automatically generated; the terminal node-links are combined into terminal node-link graphs; terminal node-link graphs are incorporated into terminal area networks. Manual review or manual further processing is inefficient and often results in including some errors that are hard to detect and fix. Naturally, any errors in the node-links are propagated into the terminal area network. Additionally, reliance on manual steps has prevented producing terminal area node-links in accordance with the Aeronautical Information Regulation and Control (AIRAC) cycle, which is an automatic data generation cycle every 28 days.
Thus, a system and method is desirable that can generate terminal area networks without further manual processing. The desired method constructs terminal area networks from accurate and terminal area node-links that do not require further manual processing. The desirable method may be operated in accordance with the AIRAC cycle.